Inspired Poems

The Angel

by: Sona Shah

(inspired by Galway Kinnell's "The Angel")

This angel who meditates between us

And the world underneath us,

trots ahead so cheerfully.

This angel approaches us in various ways,

To show us right from wrong,               

To bless us with goodness,

And shelter us from evil.

Keeping an eye over us,

Paying attention to every detail.

Descending down from the heavens,

In great times of need.

The world underneath us

Is filled with demons,

But this angel pushes them away,

Leaving only happiness and truth.

The Angel

By: Galway Kinnell

This angel, who mediates between us

And the world underneath us, trots ahead

so cheerfully.  Now and then, she bends

her spine down hard, like a dowser’s branch,

over some, to her, well-known splashing spot

of holy water, of which she herself in turn

carefully besoms out a thrifty sprinkle.

Trotting ahead again, she scribbles her spine’s

Continuation into immaterial et cetera,

Thus signaling that it is safe for us now

To go wagging our legs along vertically as we do

Across the ups and downs under which lie

Ancestors dog-toothed millennia ago into oblivion.

Tonight she will crouch at the hearth

Where demons’ breaths flutter up among the logs,

Gnawing a freshly unearthed bone---- bone of a dog,

If possible—making logs and bone together

Cry through the room, crack! Splinter! Groan!

Leaves in September

By: Sona Shah

(inspired by Galway Kinnell's "Blackberry Eating")

I love going out in late September,

to watch the brown and red

And yellow leaves, crisp and

beautiful, falling from the tall trees.

And drive down the road,

Looking at the endless looking trees

As they pass by, with the air slightly breezy,

The fall colors gleaming in the sun,

With a touch of green from the pine trees.

I love to jump in the big piles of leaves

That has recently been raked,

With the smell of freshly prepared cider

Penetrating throughout the air.

Staring into the everlasting forests,

With the gorgeous leaves diminishing with the breeze,

At the end of September.

Blackberry Eating 

By: Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September 
among the fat, overripe, icy black blackberries 
to eat blackberries for breakfast, 
the stalks are very prickly, a penalty 
they earn for knowing the black art 
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them 
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries 
fall almost unbidden to my tongue, 
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words 
like strengths or squinched, 
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps 
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well 
in the silent, startled, icy, black language 
of blackberry-eating in late September.